


The Bar at the End of the Void

by Smaragdina



Category: Dishonored
Genre: Gen, Multiple Crossovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 03:45:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Corvo! You kept us waiting." In a facsimile of the Hound Pits Pub in the Void, Corvo finds some unlikely company. They have a bone to pick with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bar at the End of the Void

**Author's Note:**

> Because "characters from different media bonding over their shared suffering" is one of my favorite tropes.

By now, Corvo is almost used to streets that twist like ribbons in the wind, upward-flowing seas, great ballrooms constructed from the quivering flesh of live whales. He’s used to Dunwall Tower, over and over and over, with Jessamine’s blood seeping down the cracks in the cobbled floors until it fills the yard and the moat and the water lock and the sea. He’s used to his cell in Coldridge slightly  _askew,_ with the wrong number of bars on the door and  _hello, Corvo_ written in his own hand on the wall.

He is familiar with the machinations of the Void, the games the Outsider likes to play in his dreams.

This is a new one.

The door to the pub is ajar. Corvo creeps up beside it and listens. The light spilling out and into the night is warm, and there are shadows moving through it –  _people_ in the pub, and the smell of spilled whiskey, and laughter like there hasn’t been since before he came to the Hound Pits. His fingers wander to the hilt of his sword. It’s still there. Just in case. Good. He presses on the door.

Someone on the other side of the door presses back, and it does not open.

“Name?” comes a quiet voice.

He can’t tell if it’s the Outsider speaking or not, and Corvo blinks. Checks to see if his mask is still there (it’s not, this doesn’t seem to be Lady Boyle’s party all over again). It’s always best to play along. “Corvo. Corvo Attano.”

“Crime?” comes the quiet almost-Outsider voice.

Corvo frowns at the door. The door does not frown back. “This isn’t funny.”

“ _Crime_ ,” says the man behind the door, and the cold wind at Corvo’s back picks up and buffets him with the scent of the sea and death.

Corvo’s throat works. He has an idea what the Outsider wants. “Murder of the Empress,” he says, equally quiet, the words tasting like tin. “Assassination. Failure to serve as Lord Protector –”

The list is long, but the voice stops him before he can begin listing things like _breath_. “Length of sentence?” it asks.

 _Life_. “Six months.”

The door swings open.

The laughter at the bar stops.

The light inside is bright, and Corvo has to take a second for his eyes to adjust, hand falling back to his sword by reflex.

“Corvo!” exclaims a man. He is drawn and thin; everyone here is drawn and thin. Corvo finds it difficult to look at him, for sometimes he is a man and sometimes he is a great black hound the likes of which he hasn’t seen; but this is the Void, he has found stranger things here. The man who’s shadow is a hound beckons him forward. “You kept us waiting.” Laugh lines crinkle around his eyes when he smiles. “Black. Sirius Black.”

Corvo indexes this name in the list of all of Dunwall’s aristocracy and comes up blank. “I’m sorry,” he says, very slowly. He shuts the door inside him and takes a few hesitant steps inside. He’s not sure if he  _wants_ to, but the light is welcoming and something about the group of men cluttered around the bar is drawing him in as if they hold a fishing line. “I don’t recognize – who are you all?”

Laughter, but not unkind.

“ _Waiting_ ,” mutters a man with a razor-sharp tilt to his gaze. His coat is stained with soap and other, darker things. “He doesn’t know anything about –”

“Peace.” The voice is accented. The speaker is old, his hair grey, but his hands are quite steady as he fills a glass and presses it into Corvo’s dumbfounded grip. “I am Jean Valjean, and this is Todd –”

“Sweeney Todd,” he corrects.

“That man is dead,” says the man called Black in a mocking stage-whisper, and Todd shoots him a glare that could  _cut._

Someone puts a hand on Corvo’s shoulder and presses him down onto a stool. The touch is _forceful_ and Corvo tries very hard not to flinch, even though he’s got a feeling these men would  _understand._  The owner of the hand is impeccably dressed and there is something cold and calculating in his eyes, something bright and over-tired and lit from within like a whale-oil fire. It’s a look Corvo knows well. The hairs stand up on the back of his neck.

“Edmond Dantès,” says the man by way of introduction. His mouth quirks. “Here, at least. As to who we are – well, we are a group of gentlemen who have been imprisoned for crimes we did not commit. It’s taken you quite a while to find your way here.”

Corvo laughs. He can’t help it. This is too wonderful and too mad and too _absurd_. “I’m sorry,” he manages when he’s done, passing a hand over his face, “I didn’t know there was such a thing. Outsider’s  _Eyes.”_  He tries his beer. It’s very good. He can feel the tension beginning to seep from his frame, and the urge to have a long chat with the Outsider about this when it’s over is becoming less and less. He glances down. “I’m not really sure if I’m supposed to be here. He doesn’t usually show me things like this.”

“None of us,” says Valjean evenly, “are  _supposed_  to be here.”

“But you’ve hit upon my point. Unwittingly.” Dantès takes the stool opposite from Corvo, folds his hands. “Before we welcome you into our little group, before the celebrating and the sharing of tales and the wagging of tails – you’ll notice Monsieur Black, here – there is something I wish to discuss. There is something we  _all_  wish to discuss. We have a slight problem.”

It’s suddenly quiet as it had been when he walked in, all eyes trained on him, the four men before him and the others in the shadows where he can’t see, and Corvo is acutely aware of how vulnerable his back is. The distance to the door. The slight glint of something silver at Todd’s fingertips. He takes a drink to wet a throat gone suddenly dry. “Yes?”

“Monsieur Attano.” Edmond Dantès leans forward. His eyes are flat, merciless, and a perfectly chilling copy of Corvo’s own. “ _Corvo._ Only  _six months?”_


End file.
